Rosario Ferré

After the death of her mother she received a considerable inheritance, which she feels gave her the necessary independence to seek a life and a career of her own. She decided to return to college and pursued a career in writing. During the early 1970s she began to publish her literary work and in 1972 became the editor of the literary magazine Zona de Carga y Descarge (Loading and Downloading Zone), one of the most important literary venues for new writers in Puerto Rico.
Her writing was quickly praised in Puerto Rican literary circles, and she became skillful in the short story genre. Some of her most important works of the time are Papeles de Pandora (Pandora's Papers; 1976), La muñeca menor (The Youngest Doll; 1976), Fábulas de la garza desangrada (Fables of the Bleeding Heron; 1982), and Los cuentos de Juan Bobo (Juan Bobo's Tales; 1981). She has recently published three major novels in English: The House on the Lagoon (1995), and Eccentric Neighborhoods (1998), and Flight of the Swan (2001). These novels have been widely acclaimed in American literary circles.

Juan Bobo: Four Folktales from Puerto Rico (I Can Read Level 3)

(Mama puts Juan Bobo to work whenever he is having a good ...)

Mama puts Juan Bobo to work whenever he is having a good time. But he always finds a way to make work fun -- like using baskets instead of buckets to carry water, or sprinkling the pig with Mama's favorite perfume.

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Rosario Ferré Ramírez de Arellano was a Puerto Rican writer, poet, and essayist.

Background

Rosario Ferré was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, in 1938, the daughter of Luis A. Ferré and the late Lorencita Ramírez de Arellano. She belongs to the second generation of the prestigious Ferré family.

Education

She was educated in elite private schools in Puerto Rico and is a graduate of Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

Rosario Ferré holds a doctorate in literature from the University of Maryland.

Career

After the death of her mother she received a considerable inheritance, which she feels gave her the necessary independence to seek a life and a career of her own. She decided to return to college and pursued a career in writing. During the early 1970s she began to publish her literary work and in 1972 became the editor of the literary magazine Zona de Carga y Descarge (Loading and Downloading Zone), one of the most important literary venues for new writers in Puerto Rico.

Her writing was quickly praised in Puerto Rican literary circles, and she became skillful in the short story genre. Some of her most important works of the time are Papeles de Pandora (Pandora's Papers; 1976), La muñeca menor (The Youngest Doll; 1976), Fábulas de la garza desangrada (Fables of the Bleeding Heron; 1982), and Los cuentos de Juan Bobo (Juan Bobo's Tales; 1981). She has recently published three major novels in English: The House on the Lagoon (1995), and Eccentric Neighborhoods (1998), and Flight of the Swan (2001). These novels have been widely acclaimed in American literary circles.

Politics

The work of this accomplished writer relies on the use of parody as a literary technique to bring attention to the "isms" and social, political, and economic inequities that affect Puerto Rican society. Her writing is strongly influenced by the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of the American feminist movement. She creates poignant constructions of the evils of capitalism, racism, classism, and sexism in Puerto Rican society.

For many years, Rosario was generally perceived to be the intellectual dissident of the Ferré family. She disagreed openly with her father's conservative views and suggested that independence is the best status for the island. She used her privileged status as a member of one of Puerto Rico's wealthiest families to put down the values and way of life of the power elite. In recent years, however, she has started to move away from her radical political stances and has started to assume a more mainstream ideology.

She favored statehood in the 1998 plebiscite to decide the political status of Puerto Rico. She wrote a highly controversial opinion piece in The New York Times, where she said: "As a Puerto Rican writer, I constantly face the problem of identity. When I travel to the United States 1 feel as Latina as Chita Rivera. But in Latin America, I feel more American than John Wayne". This change of heart and her recent ideological closeness with her father have brought her criticism from the intellectual left, who feel betrayed by the perceived change in her beliefs.

Personality

The work of this accomplished writer relies on the use of parody as a literary technique to bring attention to the "isms" and social, political, and economic inequities that affect Puerto Rican society. Her writing is strongly influenced by the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of the American feminist movement. She creates poignant constructions of the evils of capitalism, racism, classism, and sexism in Puerto Rican society.

Connections

Upon finishing school, Ferré married Benigno Trigo González, a businessman, by whom she has three children: Rosario Lorenza, Benigno, and Luis Alfredo. They divorced ten years later.

While studying at the Department for Hispanic Studies of the University of Puerto Rico, she met her second husband, José Aguilar Mora, a writer and Professor of Mexican literature;they divorced after a few years.

Ferré met her third husband, Agustín Costa Quintano, a Puerto Rican architect, at the University of Maryland, when living in Washington, D.C.. They later moved to Puerto Rico, where they resided. Ferré died of natural causes, surrounded by family on February 18, 2016 in her home in San Juan, Puerto Rico.